“Sorry. Here.” He rummaged in the pack and brought out a sealed packet with a picture of fruit on one side, and another with a picture of a round, flat object colored brown and cream. “Take these and eat them now, right this minute.”
Clearly this nut wasn’t going to let her alone until she did, and she had a lot to do. “All right,” Ky said, and opened the packets. She didn’t feel that hungry, but she bit off a piece of the breadlike thing and squirted some of the semiliquid fruit onto the rest of the bread. It was vaguely sweet and definitely tart. At least it wasn’t Aunt Gracie Lane’s fruitcake. She finished the bread, onto which she’d squeezed the last of the fruit mush.
In the meantime, the medic had grabbed one after another of her crew, insisting that they, too, insert their fingers into his device. He came back to her. “The same thing, in two hours. I’ll still be here then, and I’ll check on you. Now—I need to see the passengers.”
Bemused, but already feeling more alert, Ky led him down to the holds and introduced him. Her heart twisted at the sight of the hollow-eyed, listless men and women who lay on their pallets. The medic checked them one by one, and behind him came troopers carrying ration packs, from which they dispensed as he ordered. For these, more malnourished than her crew, squeeze packs of liquid. “They can have one every hour at first,” he said to Ky. “These are also loaded with micronutrients. And then after the first twenty-four hours, anyone who’s not having gut problems can move up to the phase two rations, which includes solids. I’d expect by the third or fourth day to move them to phase three. It could have been much worse—I’ve seen it much worse. You made a good decision, back when you cut the rations early on.”
Soon the medic was finished with his assessment; Ky headed back to the bridge. There, the new communications gear had been installed, including a viewscreen that took up half the space between her chair and the pilot’s. She finally had ordinary voice contact with the outside world. After days of spelling each message out laboriously, that was a relief, even with a Mackensee trooper standing by the com console to emphasize that the equipment belonged to them.
“Colonel Kalin wants you to call,” the trooper said as Ky came onto the bridge.
“Are the system ansibles up?” Ky asked.
“I don’t know. The Colonel—”
“Wants me to call. I understand.” She eyed him, and decided that trying to claim the overriding authority of a ship’s captain would probably not work. She would find out the most the fastest by cooperating. “Do you know the channel?”
“Yes, Captain. It’s preentered. All the captain needs to do is press that button—” The trooper pointed.
Ky pressed the button, and other telltales turned yellow, then green. In moments a man’s face took shape on the viewscreen. He wore the Mackensee uniform and metal shapes whose significance she did not know on his shoulders and lapels. Gray hair cut close, a broad face, green eyes.
“I’m Colonel Eustace Kalin,” he said. “I’m in command of the local Mackensee forces. You’re Captain Vatta, is that right?”
“Yes, I’m Captain Vatta,” Ky said.
“Captain, we have business to discuss, which would best be discussed face-to-face. I’d like you to come aboard—”
Ky shook her head. “Colonel, this is my ship, and the captain does not leave the ship—not willingly that is—while in transit.”
His brows went up. “You regret our giving you emergency medical care?”
“Not at all, Colonel,” Ky said. “I’m glad you did, and grateful for your surgeons’ skill. But now I am healthy. My place is here, aboard my ship, until we are safely docked somewhere. My second-in-command was killed when some of the… the passengers… attempted to take over the ship.”
“I see,” he said. “In that case… we have been asked by the ISC to tow your ship back to orbit near Sabine Prime. I understand that you have no onboard power?”
“That’s correct,” Ky said. “The individuals who attempted to gain control of the ship caused the drive to malfunction, and we are out of fuel. However, I am not willing to have this ship treated as a derelict and subject to wreckers’ law.”
“What would you do if we didn’t tow you back?” he asked. “You have no FTL drive; you have no working insystem drive… Were you planning to get out and paddle? Do you really think you’re in a position to make conditions?”
“All situations are negotiable,” Ky said, quoting her father. “I could, for instance, hire you myself to tow us back.”
He laughed. “You don’t scare easily, Captain Vatta. All right. With your permission and not under wreckers’ law, making no claim on hull or cargo other than that which we contracted with you to carry, will you permit us to tow you back to Sabine Prime near-orbit where we can carry on this discussion in a less public venue?”
“Thank you,” Ky said. “I accept your offer of transport.”
“What we need to do then is let your engineering staff talk to my engineering staff about where to grapple on.” He shook his head slightly. “I’m beginning to believe what Master Sergeant Pitt and Major Harris said about you, Captain Vatta.”
She had no idea what they’d said—what she remembered best were their comments on young women who harbored rescue fantasies and were too susceptible to young men. But the Colonel almost sounded approving, like the Academy Commandant on a good day.
Three hours later, the Glennys Jones was snugged up to the flank of a Mackensee warship, and Quincy and her Mackensee counterpart were deep in conversation with hull schematics. A score of pressure-suited troopers were going over the outside of the hull under their direction, applying some kind of test equipment to various points. Ky didn’t have a clue what that meant. The medic had been back to the bridge to remind her to eat her bread and fruit mush. He reported that the passengers were all doing well, sucking down the liquid food packets as fast as they were allowed.
Ky finally went to bed when she couldn’t stop yawning, only to wake a few hours later when her stomach lurched sideways and then up. She called the bridge.
“Just an adjustment to the artificial gravity,” Garlan said. “We had a little trouble synching our AG to the warship’s when they tried a microjump with us attached. But that bled off a lot of speed.”
“What about our hull strength?”
“That’s fine, Captain. There’s no strain on the linkage, it was just the delta vee surge of the double endim transition. Since you’re awake, they wanted to know if they could do it again, to save time on the way back.”
“Let me check with the passengers,” Ky said. She struggled up, splashed water on her face, and called down to the holds. The medic answered. “How are they doing?” she asked.
“That gravity surge didn’t help,” he said. “Their guts aren’t that stable yet. What happened?”
“Microjump by your ship. They want to do it again.”
“Tell ’em to wait twelve hours,” he said.
Ky called back to the bridge, and relayed that. Then she sagged against the headboard of her bunk. She was awake, tired, frustrated, and worried.
Twelve hours and fourteen minutes later, the ship seemed to lurch again. This time Ky had been able to warn everyone it was coming, and the medic reported that the passengers had come through without incident. Some of them were now eating bland solids. She had been given permission to try a proper breakfast, which tasted delicious.
They came out of that microjump in close orbit around Sabine Prime. Ky looked at the scan when the screens cleared and felt her stomach clench on the breakfast it had earlier accepted. Prime’s orbital station held several civilian ships, including Vatta Transport, Ltd.’s Katrine Lamont.
“What—” She swallowed an epithet. “What is that doing there?”
“I don’t know,” Lee said. “Last I heard, the Kat was over on the Beulah Road route.”
“I knew they’d have heard,” Ky said. “But I didn’t think they’d be crazy enough to send a ship in.”